Latin as a Suitable Computer Language for Science

Abstract

In this lecture Busa described the shape of the Index Thomisticus as it was foreseen in 1963/4. At that time, it was intended to comprise four parts: the first part dealing with texts of Aquinas; the second with his commentaries; the third with Forcellini’s Lexicon totius Latinitatis and the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae; and the fourth with “selected works useful for obtaining a method”, including the Qumran and Goethe’s Farben Lehre. As later articles will show, some changes to these divisions would be made in the following years. Aside from discussing some of the problems of linguistic disambiguation that he was facing, especially with homography, Busa is otherwise concerned to celebrate the Latin language in the article below. He proposes that it should become the lingua franca of science once more and that this would offer “an easier and cheaper alternative to computer translation”. This is presumably an implicit reference to the setting up of the ALPAC committee in April 1964 to examine the state of the art of machine translation (see Alpac 1966).